When Pain Attacks Sleep

This articulated curse holds deep, fast
under the flesh, and stinging hot with such
poison-- spurring pain to radiate past
the places your sweet empathy can touch
and on through sinister recesses hid
by cynicism and a sharp tongue. Heard
wrong, you find me taciturn and tart. Bid 
truth, I claim I brood o'er misremembered
sleights glorified by nostalgia to sin.
These seeds I daily sow will bear no fruit,
but they convolute me outside and in.
Still, I attend these nights' wanton pursuit
of rest, for the day I forfeit the cost
is when my mind or life or both are lost.